Lake Shore Limited

The ''Lake Shore Limited'' is an overnight Amtrak intercity passenger train that runs between Chicago and either New York City or Boston via two sections east of Albany. The train began service in 1975; its predecessor was Amtrak's Chicago–New York ''Lake Shore'', which operated during 1971–72. It is named for the New York Central (NYC) ''Lake Shore Limited'', which was discontinued in 1956, and uses the NYC's former main line, part of which is now the Empire Corridor.

During fiscal year 2019, the ''Lake Shore Limited'' carried 357,682 passengers, an increase of 5.9% from FY2018. In FY2016, the train had a total revenue of $28,563,624, an increase of 0.2% over FY2015.

History

The ''Lake Shore Limited'' is named after one of its predecessors that ran on the famed Water Level Route of the NYC. Like the present day ''Lake Shore Limited'', the NYC edition offered service between New York and Boston and Chicago, although the New York Central used LaSalle Street Station. The New York Central annulled the ''Lake Shore Limited'' in 1956 as part of a system-wide reorganization. Service over the Water Level Route continued until the formation of Amtrak, with the last route being the ''New England States'' and an unnamed Penn Central successor.


Amtrak did not include service west of Buffalo over the New York Central's Water Level Route in its original route plan; Chicago–New York traffic was handled by the ''Broadway Limited'' using the Pennsylvania Railroad's main line via Pittsburgh, while Albany–Boston did not have any train service''.'' Between May 1971 and January 1972, Amtrak operated the Chicago–New York ''Lake Shore'' with support from the state of Ohio. The present-day ''Lake Shore Limited'' began running October 31, 1975, with both New York and Boston sections.

The ''Lake Shore Limited'' was the last train to use the decaying Buffalo Central Terminal, departing on October 28, 1979. Since then it has used . Its New York terminus changed from Grand Central Terminal to Pennsylvania Station in 1991 following the opening of the Empire Connection.

On the night of August 3, 1994, around 3:45 am, the westbound ''Lake Shore Limited'', with two locomotives and fifteen cars, and carrying roughly 320 passengers, and nineteen crew members, derailed on Conrail-owned tracks (now owned by CSX) near Batavia, New York. The initial derailment of the wheels of the third car on the train, occurred at milepost 403.7, and the train traveled for another three miles, until the general derailment of the train, at milepost 406.7. In all, fourteen cars derailed, with some sliding down an embankment, and 118 passengers and crew members were injured. However, there were no fatalities. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause were the wheels coming off a section of flattened rail.

Service to Poughkeepsie began on November 8, 2010. In 2010–11, Amtrak studied restoring the Hammond–Whiting station stop just east of the Illinois-Indiana border (which had been dropped in 2003), but ultimately did not restore it due to the difficulty of routing trains to the station's single platform.

Due to planned repair work on the Freedom Tunnel, Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, and Track 19 in New York's Penn Station, the New York section was discontinued from May 26 to September 3, 2018. Passengers traveling to New York City could transfer at Albany–Rensselaer to ''Empire Service'' trains, which operated into Grand Central Terminal during the outage.

From October 1, 2020, to May 31, 2021, daily service was reduced to three trains per week due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Possible future

In the January 2011 issue of ''Trains'' Magazine, the ''Lake Shore Limited'' was listed as one of five routes to undergo improvement evaluation by Amtrak in FY 2011, just as the previous five routes (the ''Sunset Limited'', ''Texas Eagle'', ''California Zephyr'', ''Capitol Limited'', and ''Cardinal'') had been examined in FY 2010.

Amtrak published its Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) for the ''Lake Shore Limited'' in September 2011. One idea was to change the train's eastbound departure time from Chicago to be earlier. It currently departs at 9:30 PM, to facilitate connections from often-late West Coast trains. The improved departure time would add $2 million in yearly revenue.

Amtrak considered more radical changes to the operations of the ''Lake Shore Limited'', including a re-route over the Chicago–Detroit Line, but rejected them. This would be the first full New York City to Chicago train via southwestern Ontario and Detroit since the New York Central's ''Wolverine.''

In 2021, Amtrak proposed adding an infill station between Erie and Buffalo in Chautauqua County, New York, in either Westfield or Dunkirk

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